Archive for January, 2009
Windows 7: VMWare Workstation
Finally after 2,5 year Vista was released I can say “WOW” with the first public beta of Windows 7. The installation process was and went smooth. I installed one VM and two physical machines. The setup went fine on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M57 and on my ASUS home system. I am looking forward to see the latest version released.
What’s new in Windows 7?
- Improved taskbar and full-screen previews
- Jump Lists
- New ways to work with Windows
- Internet Explorer 8
- Windows Live
- Better device management
- HomeGroup
- Faster, more responsive performance
- Extended battery life
- Theme packages reflect your style
- Take control of problems
- Share music and videos
- Windows Touch
- Handwriting recognition additions
- AppLocker
- Bitlocker with enhanced usb encryption
- etc
If you didn’t download it than I suggest browsing to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx and get the bits. Anyway I wanted to share my first experience with installing and playing with VMWare Workstation Version: 6.5.1 Build: 126130 and Windows 7 beta. It’s simple as it should. Plug and play 
The installation went smooth and in minutes I was able to run my VMs and all without hassle. I moved from Vista to Ubuntu and in the end I installed Windows XP as my desktop OS.
Tools: BGInfo silent run and no license agreement
BGInfo is very useful when managing dozen of Windows Servers in physical and virtual environments. I even managed to get this tool deployed to all client computers at work. It has a huge value for support personal.
Since SysInternals has been taken over by Microsoft it now shows a “License Agreement” windows. Sure this is not a problem on the servers; but for client computers we don’t want to bug users with these windows.
What should users do?
We have two flavors to solve this:
- Create a reg file and import the key below
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\BGInfo]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001 - I prefer the command line below in a cmd cript which is storen All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup folder
C:\WINDOWS\Bginfo.exe almatis.bgi /timer:0 /silent /NOLICPROMPT
/NOCICPROMPT option will skip the license window. Imagine having 1000+ users clicking on the window.
Software Packaging: Adobe Customization Wizard
If you are a software packager and planning to script the Adobe Reader for software enterprise deployment than this tool is definitely you need to have for customization Adobe Reader settings.
Adobe Customization Wizard 9 is a free downloadable utility designed to help IT professionals take greater control of enterprise-wide deployments of Adobe® Acrobat® 9 and Adobe Reader® 9. With it you can customize the Acrobat installer and application features prior to deployment. Providing a graphical interface to the Windows Installer for Acrobat, the Customization Wizard enables IT administrators to:
- Modify the installer via a transform file (MST file) without altering the original package (MSI file)
- Customize the look and feel of Acrobat or Reader before deployment to meet the unique needs of your user base
Key features:
- Optimize the behavior of the installer by including silent installation, preserialization, multilingual, and custom setup choices
- Remove previous versions of Acrobat and Reader
- Suppress the EULA, registration prompts, and the Getting Started window
- Customize key application preferences — turn off automatic updates, add and set default job options, and customize collaboration and security settings
- Remove shortcuts from the desktop and the Start menu
- Edit each Adobe Acrobat application’s registry and installer tables
- Customize file attachment handling within PDF files, including specifying which file types you want to block
- Add or edit files that will be installed, including customized JavaScript or plug-ins
- Preconfigure Acrobat Connect and disable it
- Preconfigure and lock Enhanced Security settings
- Deploy custom Portfolio navigators
- Add or remove custom redaction code sets
- And much more!
Related links:
Windows Live Writer: XML-RPC services disabled
New wordpress blog has been created named “Networknet Webdesigner” which has the focus for CSS, PHP, MySQL, PhotoShop, etc. Recently I updated my Windows Live Writer and I tried to register my new blog in Windows Live Writer. Just after entering all required parameters I got the following warning:
- Error Connecting to Blog
Blog Server Error – Server Error 405 Occurred
XML-RPC services are disabled on this blog. An admin user can enable them at http. You must correct this error before proceeding.
Wordpress developers decided to disable “Remote Publishing” from version 2.6 or higher. Networknet is running since 2.5 and I never hit this problem before.
To enable the “Remote Publishing” feature login to “wp-admin” admin interface / Settings / Writing / and check “Enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols.”. See screenshot:
Related links:
